Rodentia, Unite! Cyril and Pat by Emily Gravett

Lake Park only had one squirrel, all alone and sad (poor Cyril).

Until one morning, he met Pat,

his new best friend, a big gray...

SQUIRREL!

Just Like Me!

Overlooking the, er, unfortunate, um, baldness of Pat's long pink tail, Cyril feels he's found a soul mate, someone as squirrelly as he!

Cyril and Pat spend the day in merry play, stealing rides on skate boards and teasing the pigeons. One pigeon tries to point out that Pat is an unsuitable companion.

"Can't you see that your friend is not like you? Your friend's a..."

Cyril interrupts rudely to say his friend Pat is a...

"REAL JOKER!"

The two merry tricksters continue their pesky ways. When the people toss bread to the ducks and geese in the pond, Pat promptly dives in to grab a piece, and when the geese grump at Cyril, pointing out that his friend is not who he thinks he is, Cyril calls him a great sharer! And when the Slim, the feisty terrier chases both of them, the tricky two split up, and he can't catch either one.

But, alas, one day when Cyril is using his bright eyes and cute twitchy tail to entice a peanut from a woman, her child catches sight of Pat.

"Oh, Mom...A... RAT!"

All the residents of the Park agree! Cyril just can't keep company with a dirty, disgusting RAT! Sadly, Cyril must part company with Pat. But being alone is NO FUN.

And when Slim the terrier takes advantage of Cyril's solo state to resume the perennial war between dogs and squirrels, Cyril finds himself pursued and cornered amidst tumbled trash cans on a dark street, without a tree in sight. If ever a squirrel needed a friend (especially one who hangs out with an army of his kind), Cyril does, and this friend in need is a friend indeed, in Emily Gravett's comic story of an odd couple of buddies, Cyril and Pat (Simon and Schuster, 2019).

Notable author Emily Gravett is the perfect mistress of tales with clever wit and wisdom included, and artist Gravett comes up with funny but lovable characters and pages filled with comic sight gags that will hold kids attention on each page. Emily Gravett's first book, Wolves was the winner of the Kate Greenaway Prize, the British equivalent of the Caldecott Award, and her Orange Pear Apple Bear (Classic Board Books) has become a classic toddler tale.